Protest

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• 8/22/2021
  

  The View from the New York City Hiroshima Peace Vigil

  by Michael McQuillan

  The march featured the testimony of antinuclear activists and rekindled a demand for New York's city council to divest the city budget from contractors who make nuclear weapons, but too much of the public seems willing to ignore the nuclear threat.

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• 8/22/2021
  

  Rule 50 and Racial Justice: The Long History of the IOC War on Athletes' Free Expression

  by Debbie Sharnak and Yannick Kluch

  "The recent rise of athlete activism brings the IOC’s claim that sports are a neutral space into direct conflict with athletes’ increasingly vocal demands for freedom of expression and the right to use their platform to advance human rights and social justice issues."

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/9/2021
  

  History Was Never Subject to Democratic Control

  by Helen Lewis

  Neither the local economic elite who put up Edward Colston's statue in Bristol, England nor the activists who tore it down operated with a public mandate. What are the prospects for democratic and consensual public history? 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  8/6/2021
  

  Did Last Summer's BLM Protests Change Anything?

  by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

  A commission convened by the Mayor of Philadelphia exemplifies the American preference for symbolism over substance in recently proclaimed "racial reckonings." 

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  8/5/2021
  

  Answering the Armies of the Cheated (But No Questions about War Please!)

  by Andrew Bacevich

  Americans wondering why their nation is failing to meet their basic needs since supposedly winning the Cold War need to reckon with its successor ideology, the idea of America as the Indispensable Nation, and the costs of intervention it has inspired. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  7/28/2021
  

  It's Impossible to Separate Politics and the Olympics

  by Michelle Sikes

  The Supreme Council for Sport in Africa was a collaboration of 32 nations to pressure international sporting authorities to seek to bar the white supremacist regimes of South Africa and Rhodesia from major competition, most notably through a boycott of the 1976 Montreal games. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  7/23/2021
  

  The IOC May Not Like it, but the Games have Always Been a Forum for Protest

  by Harry Blutstein

  "Baron Pierre de Coubertin, believed that Olympiads were a way to communicate “love for concord and a respect for life.” So it was not surprising that activist athletes saw the Olympics as a legitimate forum to promote those values whenever they saw them violated."

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• SOURCE: Tropics of Meta
  7/26/2021
  

  The People’s Bicentennial Commission and the Spirit of (19)76

  by Jason Tebbe

  As the national bicentennial approached, a group of New Left activists formed the People's Bicentennial Commission and adopted the symbols of the nation's founding to challenge the domination of the rich.

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• Amateurism, Sneaker Money, and the Forgotten Protest of the 1968 Games

  by Harry Blutstein

  Tommie Smith and John Carlos are remembered for their gloved-fist protest of American racism at the 1968 Mexico City Games. But they also demonstrated against the hypocritical and exploitative rules of amateurism and opened the door to endorsement payments for Olympians.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  7/17/2021
  

  Black Lives Matter Misses the Point About Cuba

  by Jorge Felipe Gonzalez

  American activists who recognize the antiracist achievements of the revolutionary Cuban government miss the ways that that government's authoritarianism and more recent economic policies disproportionately harm Afro-Cuban people. 

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• SOURCE: Radio Open Source
  7/15/2021
  

  Daphne Brooks on Truth-Telling Music

  African American Studies scholar Daphne Brooks tells the back stories of Black women in music and the cultural impact of their songs. 

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• SOURCE: In These Times
  7/15/2021
  

  Learn Lessons about Movement Building from Radical Black Women

  by Keisha N. Blain, Premilla Nadasen and Robyn C. Spencer

  Barbara Ransby facilitates a roundtable collaborative essay about the role of women in building radical movements for justice in Black communities encompassing social welfare, economic security, police accountability, women's liberation and more. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  7/22/2021
  

  Cubans Took to the Streets in 1994, Too

  by Rozzmery Palenzuela Vicente

  Since the Clinton administration, decreased willingness by the US to accept Cuban migrants as political refugees has eliminated a significant safety valve against dissent on the island – encouraging Cuban dissidents to leave. This may make current protests more enduring and possibly more effective. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  7/19/2021
  

  Gloria Richardson and Black Women’s Intellectual History

  by Robert Greene II

  Gloria Richardson became an unusual leader of the civil rights movement as an older woman activist, and her changing views on movement strategy are important to scholars today. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  7/12/2021
  

  Black Power and Anti-Carceral State Infrastructure

  by Joshua L. Crutchfield

  Mutual aid groups that formed in response to the COVID pandemic echo the ways that participants in the Black Freedom movement sought to create alternative instititutions for the benefit of communities and individuals that did not reinforce the power of the police. 

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• 7/4/2021
  

  The National Bicentennial Erased Antiwar Activism by Vietnam Veterans

  by Elise Lemire

  The United States Semiquincentennial Commission is preparing for July 4, 2026 as an opportunity for educating the public about the nation's history. It should avoid repeating the whitewash of recent history in the 1976 Bicentennial celebration.

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• 7/4/2021
  

  Thich Quang Duc and the Power of Political Self-Sacrifice

  by David Richards

  Thich Quang Duc's decision to self-immolate in protest of the repressive government of Ngo Dinh Diem accelerated the fateful fall of that regime and offers an example of the power of self-sacrifice in protest.

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• SOURCE: Knightlab
  6/29/2021
  

  Fists of Freedom: A Storymap of Responses to the Olympics Protest of John Carlos and Tommie Smith

  by Lou Moore

  Louis Moore presents an interactiv graphic exploration of media responses to the 1968 Mexico City Olympics protest of American sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  6/12/2021
  

  The Complicated History Behind BLM's Solidarity With The Pro-Palestinian Movement

  "We need to understand that Black identification with Zionism predates the formation of Israel as a modern state," says Robin D. G. Kelley, a historian at the University of California, Los Angeles who studies social movements.

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  6/9/2021
  

  Protesters Marching in Elizabeth City, N.C., over Andrew Brown’s Killing are Walking in the Footsteps of Centuries of Fighters for Black Rights

  by Melissa N. Stuckey

  A historian living and working at the site of Andrew Brown Jr.'s killing by police explains that local protesters are following generations of freedom seekers.